


Undertow

by pastel_didactic



Series: Shuake Week 2019 [3]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akechi Goro Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I sure as hell break it but I promise I also fix it, M/M, Or does he, Sorry Not Sorry, bring tissues to this one, what if the bullets weren't what killed Akechi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-23 16:03:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21084002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastel_didactic/pseuds/pastel_didactic
Summary: Somehow, and he wasn’t sure how, he was able to open his eyes.The first thing he saw was metal. Blurry, brown and oxidized copper metal, along with the purple and black stripes of his pant legs. He was slumped back against the watertight partition, blood leaking all over the floor. His hip hurt, his chest hurt. He couldn’t breathe without wheezing.There were no more shadows, and all was silent.





	Undertow

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was Meeting/Reunion/Goodbye. Surprising exactly no one, Pas has chosen "Goodbye." 
> 
> OKAY SO THIS IS HELLA LATE, BUT I'M REALLY SICK SO THIS WAS AS SOON AS I COULD POST IT
> 
> So I had a thought on my way home from university one day. 
> 
> What if the bullets weren't what killed Akechi? I mean, we don't hear his body hit the ground. Just two gunshots, and that's it. Futaba loses his reading, sure, but what if it's just because his heart rate dropped so low she couldn't pick it up? 
> 
> I promise y'all, as the idea unraveled in my head and I understood what that would mean for Goro, I almost stopped my car in moving traffic. I got chills. I had to write it. What better time than Shuake week? :D 
> 
> This was actually written in tandem with a Promare piece I've been working on called Absolute Zero, which is another angsty fic in its own right. All I got is angst today, guys. 
> 
> Take tissues.

Somehow, and he wasn’t sure how, he was able to open his eyes. 

The first thing he saw was metal. Blurry, brown and oxidized copper metal, along with the purple and black stripes of his pant legs. He was slumped back against the watertight partition, blood leaking all over the floor. His hip hurt, his chest hurt. He couldn’t breathe without wheezing. 

There were no more shadows, and all was silent. 

Akechi’s head felt like it weighed twenty pounds in the confines of his helmet, but he was able to lift his head after a fashion. A clawed hand tried to stem the blood trickling out of his abdomen, but there was no sense in that. He was going to bleed out here, and he didn’t even know how long he’d been unconscious. All the time he had left, he’d spend here, staring at the metal of the boiler room’s walls. 

He wondered if he had just long enough to think on his sins.

Akechi wondered if Futaba knew exactly how proud her mother was of her. When Akechi had descended into the Metaverse to carry out the orders he’d received that day, he’d found Isshiki Wakaba’s shadow hunched over a desk. Her space in the Metaverse was slowly being furnished due to her growing paranoia, but all that had grown in this space thus far was that desk. It was a simple, metal and glass thing with a computer, a pile of papers, and a photo frame neatly organized on top. Framed on the desk was a photo of a young girl, who Goro would later identify to be Sakura Futaba. She looked so happy, smiling over a cone of ice cream. Here, in this den of paranoia and anxiety, Wakaba kept a photo of her daughter- a shining beacon of why this research was _ worth it _. 

Goro wondered if his mother had taken any photos of him like that. 

A pain shot through his stomach, and ache that tore up his spine and down his legs. _ Fuck _ , that hurt! Akechi groaned, leaning forward as if that would help. It definitely did not help, and sent him dropping down on his side to do anything that would cease the pain. He deserved it, he supposed. Of all the deaths Akechi was responsible for, he regretted Wakaba’s death the most. As much as he would like to claim plausible deniability- that he didn’t _ know _ she would die (because he didn’t), that he was so surprised when she did die (because he was), that didn’t change the fact that he did it. Or worse, that he did it knowing her death was a possibility. Goro’s crimes were more messy, more gray than a simple, ‘oh whoops, I had no idea, guess I live here now.’ 

He was going to die slowly and painfully, just as he deserved. 

Some part of the ship above him and to the… left, maybe… rumbled and minutely shook the hold. He knew that sound- that was Haru’s grenade launcher. He’d done that girl such a horrible wrong. How many parents was he going to take away from kids just like him? Why did he feel justified at the time? Because Okumura was an actual monster who worked his people to death? Because it felt good taking the power away from adults who took too much from the desperate? Heh. Makes him sound like some kind of half-assed antihero. He definitely wasn’t that. 

There were no apologies he could give Okumura Haru, and he suspected she wouldn’t want them anyway. That was fine. Giving them to her would be like making up an excuse. Still, she fought for him. Tried to get him to stand up and fight for himself. Haru didn’t agree with what he had done, and she would never forgive him for it, but she didn’t want him to die. She was far too kind, and she didn’t deserve what he had done to her. Yet another reason why he deserved what was happening to him right now. 

Akechi rolled onto his back, hoping the pain would fade if he made himself flat. It did, just a little. Now if he moved, it felt like a twinge. A zing directly into the bullet hole. Bullet holes. He wasn’t sure how many he had. Two? Three? His mask was broken, his entire body either hurt or was entirely numb. He couldn’t feel his left leg. Gah, why hasn’t he died yet? Why was this just dragging out? Why is it, that at the prospect of death, at his inevitable conclusion, that he thought of that terrified face framed by raven hair as the gate rolled up and trapped him here? 

Akira… 

Of all the wrong he had done, Akechi felt as though he’d done the most wrong to Akira. He didn’t kill anyone in his orbit, he didn’t give anyone he personally knew a mental breakdown. Though, he supposed he could argue he’d done that to himself. His crime against Akira was far more grievous. He actually tried to kill him. Twice. He tried to kill the one person who tried to reach out for him. The one who wasn’t afraid to die to get through to him. Crazy, stupid, reckless, brave Akira. 

The one who never gave up on him. 

Akira had yelled- the first time Goro had ever heard him raise his voice. He banged on the partition between them, pleading with desperation and hopelessness, but not as much as there could have been. Akira knew Goro had resigned himself to his fate. He knew Goro was okay with dying here. But still, he brought his fist down on that door and kept telling him there were other ways. There was something haunting, deep in his voice. Something reaching out for Akechi, even more than the pleading and the panic. Akechi wondered just how much of himself he gave away to Akira. Little parcels and piecemeal tokens of his real self, the self that _ wanted _. 

Akechi wanted so much. Too much, really. Much more than a killer like him deserved. He wanted to see Akira smile. To push his bare hands through that nest of black curls just to see if it was soft. He wanted Akira to be happy, despite forcing himself down into that interrogation room. Akechi would never forget the look on Akira’s face as he passed a bullet through his brain, or the godawful sound of his head hitting the table. They joined the ranks of ghosts that haunted him at night- a cacophony of voices and blame and blood that came to collect his soul and ward off sleep. 

The night he killed what he believed to be Akira, Goro spent the entire night staring at the end of his bed, where the ghost of the raven stood. He gritted his teeth, cursed Akira’s existence. He jabbed a finger at the silent form and demanded answers from him. Why did it have to be him? Why was it him who led the Phantom Thieves? Why couldn’t the leader have been some other fool with a face he didn’t know? Why couldn’t Akira just be the cute barista that always knew his coffee order and played chess with him when the store was empty? Why couldn’t they have met sooner, when Akira’s soft words would have reached his heart before his brain? Why couldn’t they have just been two teenagers trying to figure themselves out in the world? Why couldn’t Akechi just let himself _love_ _him_? Why? Why!? 

Would it really have been so different, if they had been honest with one another? Would it have been different, if Goro betrayed Shido and came clean to Akira? Could he have helped him find a way to destroy Shido? 

“Would you have saved me,” he had begged the hallucination standing at the end of his bed, bleeding profusely from the bullet his own hand had fired into his head. His voice was hoarse from yelling, “Is that why you kept trying?” He yelled, and yelled some more, but all he got in reply was an ear-splitting silence and that bone-chilling look of frozen, slack-jawed terror on Akira’s face.

It was far too late for that.

If there was one regret Akechi Goro would say that stood out prominently from all the others, above all the lives he’d taken, and those left alive that he’d ruined, he would say that he regretted what he’d done to Akira the most. Perhaps that was a biased answer. Each crime he’d committed was worthy of the death sentence. Each one deserves equal guilt from him, and perhaps the reason why he held his crimes against Akira above the others was a selfish one. It took up the most space in his head, and filled him with a frightening amount of nausea. When he saw Akira alive… 

Akechi’s powers were not absolute. His ability to drive people insane didn’t actually guarantee they’d go rabid. Wakaba didn’t. She just… sputtered and twitched. Almost like a seizure. Some people ran into walls or begged him to kill them. It got to be so bad that Akechi limited himself to just killing shadows. It was cleaner that way, and didn’t leave as much on his conscious. There isn’t any blood or gore when a shadow dies. Akira was the exception. That was bloody and messy and way… _ way _ too real. 

He didn’t deserve it, and he would never ask for it but he hoped that Akira would forgive him for some of it. Any of it. Just a little bit. That would be enough. 

A deep, ominous rumbling came from the bowels of the ship. So loud and forceful they threatened to burst Akechi’s eardrums. The whole ship shook, and Goro forced himself to sit up despite the pain that brought him. A metal _ ping _ rung out as something ricocheted off the floor. The telltale sound of running water reached his ears. Rumble after rumble shook the boat until something on the wall across from him _ exploded. _

Terror crossed his mind as he added up the possibilities before him. The ship was fucking _ sinking_! 

Water came pouring in, filling the back room that sealed off the area. The equipment there was decidedly not waterproof, and their resulting explosions rocked the ship. For once in his life, Goro felt actual, real fear. Was he going to drown? Was that how he was going to die? He’d done this to himself, after all, when he shut the watertight gate he locked himself in here. There was no way out of this room. Akechi braced himself on a nearby pipe, trying to get himself to stand. Fuck, it hurt. Moving hurt so much, but adrenaline saw him through well enough to stand. His left leg wouldn’t carry him anymore, but his right was still sturdy. 

Not that it mattered. 

A secondary explosion from above rattled the ship again, and everything started to tilt sideways. Akechi yelped as he lost his balance and fell into the receiving water below. Goro floundered, trying to orient himself so he could swim to the surface, but his body was just too weak to tread water for long. Water flooded his helmet and was nearly sealed in by the limited space offered by his mask. 

There aren’t enough words to describe how painful drowning feels. Goro’s lungs burned and when he finally caved and tried to take a breath, all he took into his mouth was water. It just surrounded and encompassed him, a merciless force that threatened to pull him under and never let him go. His ears pounded in his head with the staccato of his heartbeat, and he couldn’t thrash enough. He had to get out of there- he had to find air! The panic and anxiety welled up in his chest only made his heart beat faster, which drummed in his ears, and the cycle continued for what felt like hours. 

Akechi had read somewhere in one of his classes that it takes roughly four to six minutes of dedicated exposure to water to drown a human. This felt like so much less, and yet so much more time. It felt like it was going on forever. 

Or at least, for the rest of his life. 

An explosion directly behind him broke open the hull and pushed him out into the waiting ocean. Shrapnel buried itself into his ribs, cutting into his arms and back. The entire world began to fade. Goro began to slow his thrashing, his heartbeat felt distant and weak. Darkness encroached on the edges of his vision. Before going entirely blank, his mind wandered and wished he could have told Akira all these things he'd ruminated on as he died. He wished he could tell Akira goodbye properly, instead of that half-assed excuse he sputtered in the boiler room. He began to sink, not float, and the last thing he saw before the darkness finally claimed him was something red reaching out for him. 

Somehow, and Akechi still isn’t sure how this keeps happening, he was able to open his eyes. 

He was warm, bundled up in something and further secured by something around him that radiated heat like a furnace. He felt so comfortable- a level of safety he doesn’t think he’s ever known. Opening his eyes, he found himself face-to-face with black fabric. One of his hands held fast onto that fabric, and it took gripping that hand carefully find that the fabric was a shirt. A sharp inhale came from above him and suddenly, Goro was tilted back to meet the face of a shocked Kurusu Akira. That was when the full measure of his position registered in his head. 

He was in Akira’s bed, and Akira was holding him. 

He was alive. 

They were both alive! 

“A-Akira..,” Goro breathed, amazed he could even do that. Akira sighed a horrifically relieved sigh and tugged Goro closer, nearly smashing the other man’s face against his chest. “Goro,” he breathed, desperate and grateful and happy against his hair. Of all the responses Akechi thought he was going to receive for having lived, relief was not one of them. Goro wriggled in Akira’s strong arms until they were eye-level. Akira seemed to stare until eventually he said something so mournful Goro felt like he was back in that freezing ocean:

“I left you for dead.” 

“You didn’t know I was still alive, Akira.” They were beyond last-name basis. Goro had tried to kill him twice, after all, and they were currently snuggled together. Not that he was going to think about what that all meant at present. 

“Goro… I’m-”

  
“Don’t you dare apologize. I deserved every bit of that.” 

A hurt look crossed Akira’s face and long, deft fingers brushed hair out of his face. “I don’t think so,” Akira replied, gentle and sincere. Goro shook his head, disbelieving and unsure. He thought back to the ghost that stood at his bedside, staring down at him and refusing to let him rest. “Why do you try so hard for me? Even after all I’ve done? Why do you haunt me?” 

Akira tilted Goro’s head back up to look at him. Akechi wasn’t sure when he’d lowered it. Akira didn’t answer with words. He never had many of them to say. Instead, Goro found Akira’s soft, pliant lips sealed over his own, and he drowned in a different way. Hands pushed into pitch curls and found them to be the softest thing he’d ever felt. When Akira pulled back to smile at him, it was happy and whole, a bright thing that blossomed on his face that encouraged Goro to crack a smile of his own. 

He didn’t know where to go from here. In truth, Goro never expected to live this long. But he was content in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be alone. Whatever would happen with Shido, whatever would happen to the Phantom Thieves. That was something they could think about later. For now, they both just wanted to rest, and think about how lucky they were to be alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Pastel offers no apologies.
> 
> I love you all. 
> 
> Until next time! <3


End file.
